April 20, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
495 
on niy chosen route, confident that I would fetch 
up somewhere. There was little to break the 
monotony of the following few days. Being un¬ 
able to sleep soundly at night on the prairie, I 
would fold my arms on the pommel, rest my 
head upon them and get an hour’s sleep. Skee- 
zik was not backward, however, in “getting on’’ 
to my practice, and once familiarized therewith, 
he turned the knowledge to account. I would 
awaken to find the pony standing still, his feet 
grouped together as he was wont to place them, 
his head hanging down till his nose almost 
touched the ground, also sound asleep. My 
rations from the stock farm becoming exhausted, 
I was reduced to bologna, jerked beef and bis¬ 
cuit. Till this time the prairie had afforded 
ample sustenance for my horse, but as the days 
passed, I noted with alarm that grass was con¬ 
fined to occasional patches with stretches of sand 
between. Also the water courses seemed to be 
getting further apart, and the meager supply was 
often of such vile quality that I would suffer 
a raging thirst rather than imbibe. 
Finally there came a day when we failed to 
find any even of the vile stuff that Skeezik would 
drink so gingerly. The poor beast suffered ter¬ 
ribly, and when at noon we halted to rest, his 
eyes seemed almost human as he stood dejected¬ 
ly looking at me, his dry, parched tongue lolling 
from his mouth. About the middle of the after¬ 
noon I espied a grove of timber and hastened 
but like the others, the creek was dry. It seemed 
as though I must give up the fight and collapse, 
when a snort from Skeezik caused me to look 
for its cause. To my surprise I found the source 
of his agitation to be a group of Indians, men 
and squaws, seated on the ground and evidently 
making a dinner. 
As I rode up to the group I made what I 
meant for an eloquent sign of thirst. 
“Thirsty, huh? Plenty water in run,” point¬ 
ing toward the creek bed. 
I do not know whether I was more surprised 
at his use of English or his statement regarding 
water in the dry creek, but I hastened to assure 
him that the creek had utterly dried up, that I 
had followed it for half a mile, and that I and 
my horse were dying from thirsf. 
Again pointing toward the creek he assured 
me that I would “find water plenty,” and I has¬ 
tened in the direction indicated. To my inde¬ 
scribable delight I found a hole scooped out of 
.the bed of the creek, and which was two-thirds 
full of water. 
To throw myself from the saddle and dip up 
a cupful of the precious fluid was the act of an 
instant, but quick though I was, Skeezik was no 
whit behind. Thrusting his nose half way to 
his eyes .into the grateful liquid he drained the 
pool. It was impossible to pull him away. Firm¬ 
ly squared against all onslaughts and overtures 
he stood like a rock licking the moist sand and 
even eating mouthfuls of it. 
After our thirst had been slaked I staked the 
pony at the edge of the timber where he could 
nibble the tufts of herbage and ventured back to 
the aborigine banquet. The words of my own 
language spoken by the Indian whom I first met 
had so reassured me that I felt no fear. The 
bucks having finished their repast were stretched 
about on the ground, some smoking, some con¬ 
versing in the gutteral jargon peculiar to their 
kind and others-taking a snooze, while the squaws 
were trying to appease their appetites with what 
their liege lords had left. A savory odor greeted 
my nostrils, whetted my appetite and suggested 
the character of the banquet,. the remains of 
which were contained in a large iron kettle. Al¬ 
though the amount was limited, one of the 
squaws generously fished out a tin dish half full, 
using her hand for a ladle, and tendered it to me. 
Then my eyes rested upon the contents of the 
dish, and though appetite was persistently clamor¬ 
ing for satisfaction, my stomach rebelled. Just 
as I found myself wondering how I could de¬ 
cline the squaw’s hospitality without giving of¬ 
fence, a man walked up, leading a horse, the 
latter even more numerously equipped than Skee¬ 
zik. He walked straight up to the squaw and 
kicked the dish out of her hand. 
Extending his hand in a friendly greeting, the 
newcomer inquired: “What fetches you into 
this benighted region?” 
Reading in his face that I could trust him, I 
confided my story to him. He seemed surprised 
and would hardly believe that I had made the 
journey alone across what he said, next to Death 
Valley, was the most dangerous country to travel 
through in the whole United States. 
It seems that I was about 150 miles off the 
Santa Fe trail, and but a shorf distance from 
the Arkansas Valley. My friend was an Indian 
agent, employed with several others, in escorting 
a large band of Indians to the Government reser¬ 
vation. He and those with him were acting as 
advance guard for the main force, which was 
several miles behind. It was their duty to select 
camping places where water and grass could be 
procured. Then he showed where the Indians’ 
ponies were staked out further up the timber 
where the buffalo grass was more abundant. I 
questioned him about the buffalo and he said I 
had already crossed their trail, but that they had 
all gone to their summer feeding grounds several 
hundred miles up country. This was a keen dis¬ 
appointment to me, especially as he said they 
would not return till about the first of Novern- 
ber, and if the weather was mild, probably not 
until December. 
That night the main body of the expedition 
came up and several hundred Indians, squaws, 
papooses and dogs swarmed over everything. 
Fires were lighted, tents set up for the agents, 
the Indians preferring to sleep under the open 
canopy of heaven to the work of setting up 
shelter. Rations of cornmeal and salt beef were 
served, while the agents had their own mess and 
a greater variety of eatables. I accepted an in¬ 
vitation to sup with the latter and enjoyed a 
good meal of smoked fish, jerked buffalo tongue, 
army biscuit and “slumgullion,” as Mark Twain 
was wont to call the muddy coffee of the plains. 
When pipes were lighted after supper, I had 
a long talk with the agents and learned quite a 
good deal about the natural features of the coun¬ 
try. For one thing, the dry water courses which 
I had supposed were the beds of dried-up rivers 
were, I was told, merely ravines formed by the 
action of surface water, which they served to 
carry off in seasons of much rain. I was also 
told what the Indians had already taught me, 
that by digging in the bottom of almost any one 
of these ravines I would find water in abund¬ 
ance, and the purest water that could be found 
in that countrv. its percolation through the sand 
acting as a filter. The vast herds of buffalo 
which roamed that country but a few years be¬ 
fore were fast becoming extinct by the zeal of 
hunters who slaughtered them just for the sake 
of killing big game, then leaving them to be 
the food of coyotes. Several hunting parties of 
Englishmen, they said, were even then on their 
way to the North country, making their boasts 
that they would beat the record for numbers of 
buffalo killed. 
“At this rate the whole species will be extinct 
in a few years,” declared one of the agents. 
The correctness of his prophecy was long ago 
demonstrated. 
The following morning after breakfast my 
rifle, with its homemade stock, came in for close 
inspection by both agents and bucks. An old 
brave who handled it very critically seemed much 
impressed. He called some of his companions, 
pointed out a group of curiously wrought notches 
which I had often wondered about on the stock, 
and then all became excited and gibbered vocifer¬ 
ously. From what I could glean they had seen 
the gun before and recognized the markings. 
But they refused to elucidate, and I remained in 
ignorance of possible history. 
It would have jibed in with my inclinations to 
continue with the party to the end of their route, 
not only because of the greater ease of traveling, 
but for the sake of company. I had come to 
have a sort of horror of being alone in that 
trackless wilderness, but to have remained meant 
the abandonment of one of my cherished 
schemes. Consequently, after replenishing my 
stock of rations, I laid an acute angle to the 
line of their route and galloped off to the south¬ 
west. For hours afterward, on ascending one 
of the rolling bluffs which characterized the face 
of the country, I was able to make out the cara¬ 
van, stretched out on the plain like an enormous 
snake, slowly pursuing its sinuous way. At last, 
when I could no longer make out any signs of 
life against the purple horizon, the utter lone¬ 
liness of the situation crowded upon me with 
almost overwhelming force. My first impulse 
was to turn Skeezik’s head in the direction of 
the vanishing point of my late friends and ride 
under a forced draught of whip and spur until I 
should find some of my own kind once more. 
Then something akin to pride came to my as¬ 
sistance. I ate a biscuit and sent the pony along. 
That afternoon I sought to beguile the monotony 
of the situation by shooting at birds which flew 
overhead. I-had forgotten that Skeezik was a 
novice in experience with firearms at close quar¬ 
ters. On the first shot from my revolver the 
brute stopped as though the bullet had found 
lodgment in his brain. His head flew up with 
an ominous snort; he whirled and looked up 
win d, then back again with a remarkable exhi¬ 
bition of side stepping which brought all of my 
sticking facilities into instant play. This, how¬ 
ever, did not seem to clear up the mystery to 
Skeezik’s satisfaction, and he proceeded to mani¬ 
fest his disapprobation of the whole proceeding 
by bucking. When finally he was sufficiently 
under control to enable me to pull the gun again, 
I fired another charge, determined to have it 
out with Skeezik then and there. To my sur¬ 
prise when the shot rang out he came down to 
a standstill, looked around at me as though the 
situation had just dawned upon him, and he 
would apologize for not having understood it 
before, and went to nipping at the tufts of buf¬ 
falo grass round about. Subsequent shots pro¬ 
duced no more effect upon him than the yelp of 
a coyote. [to be continued.] 
